Former Dublin goalkeeper John O'Leary says Diarmuid Connolly needs to be more disciplined "to become a great player".

The 1995 All-Ireland winning captain was speaking to the RTÉ GAA podcast after the St. Vincent's clubman was black-carded for the second game in-a-row late in the first half of yesterday's Allianz League Division 1 final loss to Kerry. The dismissal came a mere three minutes after Jonathan Lyne had also been shown a black card for hauling Connolly down.

"I'm not going to preach to him, but he needs to become a great player by ensuring he doesn't fall into those traps that opposition set for you, a pull of a jersey, little niggle and a bit of a push and a shove," O'Leary said.

"The really, really good players don't react to that. They react by becoming even better footballers and putting the ball over the bar and in the back of the net.

"Then, the fella that's been aggravating you feels even worse, but he's risen to that niggle a couple of times, to his own personal cost and a couple of times to the team's cost.

"So he's got to grow more mature when it happens, and learn from it. He's still a young man but he's a lot of experience on the pitch and you'd like to think he'd have it out of his system by now. He has to lose that trait to become a really great player."

When it was pointed out to O'Leary that Connolly is often 'targeted' by the opposition, he replied: "He just has to live with it and put up with it. He's done it really well many a time but a couple of times, the screen falls back and the shade drops and he reacts and gets caught.

"But he's a phenomenal footballer, no doubt."

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